Review: Maybe it’s because I had such low expectations going into Hot Pursuit that I wound up digging it more than I likely should have…or maybe it’s just that this kind of cliché-ridden road trip farce arrived at the perfect time when I needed a laugh. Either way, though early reviews have panned this female-driven comedy for being bird-brained and for failing to be nothing more than its one-joke premise there’s more than a little gold to be found among the coal.

Let me say that in all honesty there’s little in Hot Pursuit you haven’t seen done before (and better) in similar films. TV writers David Feeney and John Quaintance make the jump to the silver screen in a very TV-minded script with attempts for laughs every few minutes and episodic scenarios that all seem to be variations on the same joke. Thin character development and a lack of overall surprise handicap the movie, as does Anne Fletcher’s (The Guilt Trip) hands-off direction that suggests a style favoring sidling up to the chess pieces instead of moving them with purpose.

What keeps the film from descending immediately into agonizing awfulness is the off-the-chart chemistry of its leading ladies. Reese Witherspoon (Wild, Inherent Vice) and Sofia Vergara (The Three Stooges,Fading Gigolo) have the kind of lightening in a bottle charisma with each other that help each tired joke land sans thud and allow audiences to remain engaged for its trim 87 minute running time. The best part about this pairing is that the actresses are allowed to play on their strengths, rather than resort to them. Does that make sense? Let me see if I can explain.

Vergara is a spicy Latina sexpot and she plays it to the hilt, but the comedy isn’t purely visual and the actress shows some different layers that I wasn’t expecting. True, most of her role is delivered via the shouting method and she couldn’t be more stereotypical but it’s less offensive than it could have been and frequently funnier than her role on TV’s Modern Family.

She’s matched well with Witherspoon playing a tightly wound cop previously benched for an accident involving a Taser gun and the mayor’s son. She’s called into action when the FBI needs her to help transport Vergara and her husband who are set to testify against a drug kingpin. Clearly, things go awry and the two ladies bicker over 24 hours as they avoid killers for hire that don’t want them to arrive in time for Vergara to give her testimony.

After making a name for herself with feather-light comedies, Witherspoon picked up an Oscar and hasn’t really set foot back into the wacky comedy genre since. Some will say she’s slumming it here but Witherspoon is no dummy and knows exactly the kind of performance she’s giving here. Wearing a variety of costumes (including one drag get-up that produced a nice belly-laugh) the actress seems to be having a ball being partnered with Vegara and, unlike the tedious 2013 female buddy film The Heat, the audience is invited to share in the fun as well.

That’s another difference between Hot Pursuit and The Heat. I hated the pairing of Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock because the script forced Bullock into a straight-man role that the actress wasn’t comfortable with. She struggled with truly owning the ribald comedy and the film was a disappointment because of that. In Hot Purusit, however, Vergara and Witherspoon are in total understanding about the jobs that they have to do. Sure the laughs are cheap…but they’re laughs all the same.

Ending with one of the funniest end credit sequences since 22 Jump Street, I’ve the feeling that the way critics are trashing Hot Pursuit will mean it will sail quickly through theaters but I’d urge you to give it a try. Even if this may not be wholly original or free from a been-there-done-that feeling I liked it quite a lot and I’d welcome another cinematic collaboration for its stars.